Vero vs Instagram – But what about Flickr?
Photographers are looking for alternatives to Instagram, and Vero seems to be the current trend to where photographers are going. But - what about Flickr? It’s been around for ages and it’s literally made for photographers to share their work and collaborate with other photographers.
Am I missing something here? People are jumping the Insta ship but are they going to the right place?
Why are photographers leaving Instagram?
That answer is simple. Photographers are reporting a loss in engagement and a drop in followers, with some mentioning their engagement has dropped off a cliff!
Instagram isn’t pushing photography to the masses like it used to, it’s now videos and reels. By its own admission it is focusing on video-based content now and going into the future. This is fine for people looking to be entertained with this content but for the photographer, that primarily concentrates on still imagery, this isn’t good!
You can view and follow my Instagram here www.instagram.com/marcnewton
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What do you want from social media?
So, before we look at alternative social media apps you should really answer this question. What do you want from social media?
For me, it’s to share my work, get recognition/praise from others, be inspired, get ideas from other photographers and bring people to The School of Photography to buy our courses. I also want to share what I get up to personally on some occasions but that part of social media isn’t important to me.
So, when you analyse that - It’s all about me, isn’t it? – It’s quite a selfish use of social media. But aren’t you all using it for you. Who is actually using social media for others? Even if you’re looking for good examples/inspiration to progress your learning, you are still using it for you.
And this has always been the main flaw in social media for photographers, there are lots more people looking to take praise and followers than there are to give praise and follows.
With that now in mind, let’s look at Vero and Flickr.
What is Vero?
Their tag line is ‘true social’. It’s a platform that is free of ads and data mining – Vero actually means ‘truth’ in Italian.
It’s not a social media platform that is just for photography – it’s for anything really, like Facebook and Instagram is.
Vero is currently free, but the original business plan was to invite the first million users for free and then start charging a subscription fee – this hasn’t happened yet. Remember, we live in a capitalist society and nothing is free! You would expect Vero to charge at some point or have ads.
I’ve actually been on Vero for a few weeks now and you can follow me here if you wish https://vero.co/marcnewton
The Pros
You see only the content you want - just the content from people you follow.
Phone app and Desktop app. With a desktop app you can remove apps from your phone and actually get your life back! That is a big bonus for me.
You can # your images in a very similar way to Instagram to get discovered.
The Cons
Desktop app is a little hard to use, not as intuitive as you would like, but maybe that’s because I’m trying to use it like Instagram and Facebook.
Hard to find new content. Say what you want about Instagram, but it used to do pretty well with suggesting content to you that it thought you might like – In most cases, cream did float to the top! In Vero you have to search for a # you are interested in, and it will display the content attached to that # chronologically. This means you may have you search for some time before finding good content.
Where Instagram and Facebook filter out the poor pictures via their algorithms, Vero does not because it doesn’t mine your data. This means that it does not learn what you like. But, is this a good or bad thing? – you tell me?
What is Flickr?
Flickr was founded in 2004 and is a massive photo sharing website and app. But it took a knock when Instagram became popular. And, in the past, they changed their policy so that in order to have a Flickr account, you needed a Yahoo email address, but this is no longer the case. Those two things caused Flickr to fall behind in the preferred photo app by many photographers.
You can have a free account where you can upload up to 1000 photos and you see ads. There is also a paid subscription which hovers around £5 per month with their different payment options.
The Pros
Images can be viewed as high res as you like – However unless you want people to download your high-res images, I wouldn’t recommend it. Always add a watermark to your images and upload images no bigger than 1500px on its longest edge. To find out how to do that click here.
Facebook and Instagram reduce the quality of your photos, but Flickr don’t – a 1500px image will look a lot better on Flickr than FB and Insta.
You have the option to organise your work into albums.
You can create galleries where you can save the work of others you are inspired by.
Join and create groups – e.g. photography genres you are interested in. And you can add your photos to these groups for more exposure.
Create/join discussions.
You can work from a desktop – Again you can get your life back by removing phone apps!
Upload direct from Lightroom via publish services. Keywords become tags in Flickr – this is similar to #’s so there is no need to add #’s like on Instagram. Title – caption – watermark – copyright info – Exif data will all be added by default when uploading via Lightroom.
The Cons
Groups! Like Facebook groups, you will have your good and bad.
It’s a paid service after 1000 photos. Nothing is free in this world!
There is dodgy content! Flickr doesn’t filter content like FB and Insta so be careful what you search for!
Like other platforms, it seems to be hard to get engagement.
It has a Trustpilot score of 2 out of 5! Am I missing something here?
You can view and follow my Flickr account here www.flickr.com/photos/marcnewton
What’s next?
I’ve now got accounts with Vero, Flickr and Instagram please follow me if you wish because I’m going to upload to these regularly, to see what happens and report my findings in a few months. I’ll post the results on the relevant social platforms and what I will be looking for is what one actually suits photographers and what one gets the most engagement. Watch this space!
Please tell me - Have I missed something? – do you agree/disagree with the pros and cons here? – tell us in the video comments above.
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